13 July 2011

There are several posts up this morning on nihilism in object-oriented ontology (OOO) - see here, here, and here. The point seems to be that, because OOO claims that humans are merely one being among many it degrades values and meaning in the world. I don't find that to be the case at all, and I agree with all three of the above posts that correlationism offers far more nihilistic potential than OOO or speculative realism in general. If all values are human constructs and humans are the only beings involved in the creation of meaning, then there can be no basis for comparing values and all meaning is ultimately meaningless. The only remedy available to such a world-view is to posit a transcendental being (i.e. God) which imbues the world with meaning apart from that which humans create.

For OOO on the other hand, meaning is created by and for all of the different entities that exist in the universe producing a tangled web of meaning and values which we contribute to, but which is not wholly dependent upon us.

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"Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."-Eugene Debs

“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos”
-Edward O. Wilson